USS NEW JERSEY FIRES 16 ICHERS OFF CAPE HENLOPEN 1968

HISTORY OF CAPE HENLOPEN AND BEYOND

CAPE HENLOPEN FIRING RANGE 1968

Aboard The USS New Jersey at Sea: April 1968

The Battleship USS New Jersey cruised in the Atlantic yesterday toward the end

of four days of sea trials and testing of her 16 inch guns at the Cape Henlopen Firing Range. Today all nine of her 16 inchers will be fired for the first time since she was put

in mothballs over ten year ago . Each gun will be fired once. Then each of the three gun

turrets will fire a salvo.. Eighteen projectiles to be fired are all that are aboard for the

trials

It was because of the big guns that the USS New Jersey was taken out of the

reserve fleet at Philadelphia Naval Shipyard and reactivated at a cost of $20 million.

By the end of September she is ti be off the coast of Viet Nam pounding

enemy positions from miles at sea.

Yesterday the USS New Jersey had cruised 130 miles to NE of Norfolk for a series of high speed test which were postponed because of boiler problems, and she

headed back to a point 50 miles off Cape Henlopen.. The huge battlewagon, as long as

three football fields, had left Philadelphia Naval Base last Monday and will leave for

the west coast in May, then on to Vietnam.

Abstract: Wednesday, 17 April, 1968, The Central New Jersey Home News,

New Brunswick, New Jersey, for The Cape Gazette Blog,

History of Cape Henlopen and Beyond.